Would you like to save your medical expert’s time, reduce the cost of his report, and have your case brought to the top of the pile?
OK, we have the answer.
Ask any experienced medical expert in any specialty, who is frequently instructed in clinical negligence and complex PI cases, and they will tell you that their heart sinks when they’re presented with a badly ordered set of medical records – which they know are going to take them hours to sift through. They don’t want to charge their time for doing this, but they have to pass at least some of it on in their invoice. At their rates, even an extra hour or so is a substantial sum.
How can this cost be reduced?
It is pointless for an expert’s time to be taken up in this way. They should have a clear indication of the issues from their letter of instruction. If the records have been correctly prepared, they can go straight to the bundle and navigate it easily to find the relevant evidence relating to those issues – then spend their time where it should be directed, to interpreting that evidence, presenting a cogent view and balancing the strengths and weaknesses of the case.
As one nursing expert (Alison Conway, AJC Healthcare Consulting) said recently:
“I am a total advocate for notes being ordered, as the additional time and resultant impact on the quality of the report cannot be stressed enough.”
It is an important point that the content and even the conclusions of the report may be compromised by sub-optimal preparation of the evidence.
How Clinco can assist medical experts
If you are an expert, and find that you don’t like the state of the records which arrive for review, we can put them in order for around the same cost as just one or two hours of your time. Some experts pay the cost themselves and then add it to their invoice. Or let your instructing solicitor know that you’d like them to get a quote from us for ordering the records, and we’ll get them sorted and back to you.
Paying expert hourly rates for ordering records is not a good idea
For solicitors sending out instructions in complex cases, if you use Clinco to organise and paginate the evidence first, you will find your instructions are well received – and more readily worked upon. Most good experts do this kind of work because they enjoy it, but they definitely don’t enjoy the groundwork. Paying expert hourly rates for ordering records is not a good idea.
